Hundreds in Washingtonville displaced by Irene

Washingtonville — Raging floodwaters swallowed this village of 7,200 Sunday morning, driving hundreds from their homes and knocking out phone service.

JOHN SULLIVAN

Washingtonville — Raging floodwaters swallowed this village of 7,200 Sunday morning, driving hundreds from their homes and knocking out phone service.

As the land dried out and communication was restored days later, a devastating portrait of Hurricane Irene's force emerged, as did stories of heroism and survival.

A quick inventory of the fallout includes extensive damage to Village Hall and the village fire station, the loss of more than 800,000 gallons of water from two ruptured water tanks, dozens of homes condemned and hundreds of displaced flood victims, some of whom will be unable to recover their homes.

The unprecedented scope of the destruction, residents and officials said, resulted from an unexpected and unexplained surge of water from the Moodna Creek that left parts of the village under more than 8 feet of water.

The peak of the chaos occurred between 4-6 a.m. Sunday, when the surge from the Moodna burst holes in the foundations of houses on Patricia and Beverly lanes and inundated the Washingtonville Manor and Brookside Acres mobile home parks, south of Main Street.

Just after 4 a.m., rescuers received calls about people trapped at a dairy farm on Route 94 owned Chris Kleister's family. Inside the barn, Kleister and his younger brother, Jimmy, struggled to keep some 40 head of cattle above water.

The two brothers saved the cows as well as their mother, who sat in a boat that Jimmy pulled — Chris pushed from behind — while wading through chin-deep water across flooded fields.

"You had to hang onto that boat, because without it, you would have drifted," Jimmy Kleister said.

At about the same time, on Cardinal Drive, Thomas DeVinko and a neighbor retreated to the second story of DeVinko's home after rapidly rising waters of the Moodna engulfed the first floor. They donned life preservers as the water rose half a foot into the second story.

DeVinko's wife, Maureen, in consulting with Mayor Kevin Hudson, opposed the idea of sending in National Guard trucks or young firefighters, a selfless decision that left her husband stranded for at least two days, Hudson said.

"It's too risky, especially in the middle of the night," Hudson said she told him.

"I live on the same street," Hudson explained. "You can't tell where the road ends and the side culverts begin; a National Guard truck riding through could easily have sunk into the water."

As the floodwaters surged, cries for help erupted on police radios from people who had remained or returned to their mobile homes, despite an order to evacuate Saturday evening.

Volunteer firefighters, with the help of two trucks and troops from the National Guard, spent hours braving rushing waters to rescue victims.

The soaked victims filled a temporary shelter created Saturday afternoon when Hudson — whose act-first, think-later style of governing has drawn criticism since he took office in April — commandeered a vacant building, a former health club on East Main Street, for use as a shelter and temporary replacement of the flooded village offices.

When a Red Cross shelter with food didn't materialize quickly enough, Hudson and Deputy Mayor Scott Congiusti drove to Walmart to buy food on their own.

"I'd never met the man up to that point, but the job he did was unbelievable," Kenneth Craig said of Hudson. Craig stayed at the village-run shelter with his wife and kids.